The tradition of minting coins started in ancient Greece. The images of emperors and famous rulers have been encrypted on obverse since ancient times. The reverse sides of the world coins remained hallow. It was until the tradition of incrusting different great civic symbols or important natural monuments appeared in 8th century B.C. in ancient Greece. The city-state was the first greatest civic symbol to appear on the reverse.
I found this article on http://dig4coins.com/articles/ancient-c ... coins.html and the tradition is really beautiful, that has many historical events.

This is very true and also the currency rings and bars from early Celtic britain. Though these are tokens and do not strictly classify as coins ( a piece of precious*metal whose intrinsic value is equal to its face value and stamped with a design guarenteing its weight and fineness )
*this includes copper and its alloys
Regards
DTM

Dave, do copper aloy coins come int othe "precious metal" bracket - I was taught that the Iron Age potin or bronze coinage represented the first use (in Britain) of coins as an abstract representation of value rather than a direct "weight of gold = value of coin" absolute value.

The "currency bars" of iron may or may not be currency - the identification stems from a passage in Caesar (I think) which mentions iron bars being used as money but they may equally well be a type of ingot whose shape and weight roughly correspond to a sword blade but which, presumably, would allow the metal quality to be assessed and be eassier to chop into small bits for use than a cube of metal.

m300572 wrote:Dave, do copper aloy coins come int othe "precious metal" bracket - I was taught that the Iron Age potin or bronze coinage represented the first use (in Britain) of coins as an abstract representation of value rather than a direct "weight of gold = value of coin" absolute value.

The "currency bars" of iron may or may not be currency - the identification stems from a passage in Caesar (I think) which mentions iron bars being used as money but they may equally well be a type of ingot whose shape and weight roughly correspond to a sword blade but which, presumably, would allow the metal quality to be assessed and be eassier to chop into small bits for use than a cube of metal.

Yes as stated in previous posting Copper and its alloys and tin are included.
Incedently the reason the Potin coins are cast is that the alloy is much to brittle to strike ( it shatters under compression)

I was taught that the coins of flat iron or bronze age was first used (in Britain the coins as an abstract representation of value instead of directly to the &quot;weight of gold coin, value intrinsic value. &quot;The currency bars of iron may or may not be monetary - to identify because of Caesar song I think, which refers to the iron bars used for money, but could also be a kind of block shape and weight is around the blade of the sword, but that presumably would have allowed the metal quality must be assessed and cut into small pieces eassier uses other than a cube of metal.

m300572 wrote:The "currency bars" of iron may or may not be currency - the identification stems from a passage in Caesar (I think) which mentions iron bars being used as money but they may equally well be a type of ingot whose shape and weight roughly correspond to a sword blade but which, presumably, would allow the metal quality to be assessed and be eassier to chop into small bits for use than a cube of metal.

There appears to have been quite a few variations on the shape of so called 'currency bars', we can be reasonably sure that Iron was a valued resourse, and it appears that a certain shape of bar appears in a certain area (in Britain anyway), the shape tends to be that of a flat bar of varying lengths, roughly worked, but more often than not it has a worked end, usually shaped into a crude socket. This quite possibly was done to show the quality of the material, as flakey or serious fracturing on the socket end would indicate poor iron. No doubt they would also 'ring' the bar to listen to the noise (again this cannot be proven, but stands to reason) as it again is a method still used today when you dont have a mass spectrometer and electro microscope to hand I would say another reason the bars are worked into the basic shape is transportation, a solid cube or other shape is a tad awkward whereas you could stack quite a few in a bundle and shove them into a pack or onto a pack animal without too much hardship.